Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy fucking hated tax time.
He shouldn’t have had to hate tax time, or think about it at all, or even be aware of the end of the financial year beyond a vague assurance that the family accountant had secured them a sizeable refund from the Ministry’s revenue department due to a complicated series of loopholes and exemptions. The Malfoy family accountant knew all about assets and property and write-offs for rents received.
They did not know anything about the obligations of the sole trader, and Chadwick had had the gall to turn his nose up when Draco asked him to take care of his affairs for the first time a few years ago. Matters relating to income from labour, Chadwick had sniffed, was outside the firm’s remit; he could, however, recommend to Draco other firms that, although lesser, would be perhaps better suited to his needs?
It was small comfort that his father had fired Chadwick after that, ending a three-hundred-year-old business partnership between Malfoy Manor and the firm. All the accountants who serviced the old pureblood families, though, had similar specialisations: the studious application of eighteenth-century property law to vast baronial estates. The new one was at least polite about her limitations, taking the wise tack of downplaying her expertise as outdated, apologising to Draco for not being able to assist in his innovative and forward-thinking business ventures (“Of course, it is so important for our venerable families to diversify incomes and safeguard assets as best they can for future generations”) and while Draco was still, at the end of the day, stuck doing his own tax returns, he felt his own ego to be a little less bruised by it.
The good news was, as he worked through the accounts for the first time in twelve months, that his reportable income had increased significantly since last year. He was more established now, commanding a near monopoly on Ministry contracts and able to increase his rates for private contracting. It was all going into a separate Gringotts vault for Scorpius – the child would never want for assets, being a Malfoy, but Draco wanted him to have access to what he called, privately, failson money – the kind of money he could blow on travel at eighteen, or to move out of home for a bit and get a flat with friends, or start a harebrained business scheme. Scorpius was all of seven years old, but Draco’s own young adulthood had been robbed from him and if building a very cushy safety net could help his son be a little more stupid and carefree from seventeen to twenty-five, it was a worthy investment.
Not that Draco had set out to have a career. The old families didn’t do that – at best, they served on boards or in politics (not as public servants, but in the Wizengamot or other representative bodies) – but one idle curiosity had led to another, which led over time to the acquisition of niche and marketable expertise, and now he was a Heritage Consultant.
It was a nebulous title, one that encompassed the equivalent of about seven discrete fields in the Muggle world. His Ministry contracts ran the gamut from archaeology to archival work; his private contracts largely in family history and appraising buildings and artefacts; occasionally he was called upon to provide expert witness for court cases regarding property claims. He’d just wrapped one of the latter, which alone had probably netted him enough to put Scorpius through seven years of Hogwarts robes, textbooks, equipment and spending money. It was nice, he decided as he scrawled numbers into the Department of Revenue forms, to have earned money by doing something more than simply existing.
He was interrupted by a perfunctory knock on his study door. Astoria, with a distinctive Ministry-branded brown envelope in one hand and a mug in the other. “Owl just arrived for you,” she said, tossing the envelope on the desk in front of him. “How are the taxes going?”
“Had to remember how I fixed the accounting charms on this thing last year, but straightforward after that. I should really be paying myself a lot of money for this.”
Astoria passed him the mug she was holding, filled with steaming coffee. “Payment for services rendered.”
“Pretty poor hourly rate.”
“I carried your child,” she reminded him, a variant of which she had been using against him since they first started trying to conceive said child, and which Draco had long accepted he couldn’t argue against.
He ripped open the letter instead. “Job from Magical Law Enforcement. There’s a deceased estate…” he trailed off as he skimmed the details. “Proceeds of crime, et cetera. They want valuations done of antiques, possible evidence of historic wrongdoing…” He winced. “It’s the Lestrange estate.”
“That’s been deceased for what, fifteen years?”
“Held up in litigation, I assume.” There had been a lot of that going around; with entire families killed or imprisoned following the war, estates were seized by the Ministry and tied up for years as executors and lawyers tried to find heirs or appealed sentences. He had looked into the estate himself a while ago in case his mother had any claim on it through her sister, but the property was willed to a brother of Rodolphus – serving life in Azkaban – and then seized. “I’ll be working with an Auror team on site,” he read.
“Good,” Astoria said. “They can take a curse for you.”
“Your concern flatters me.”
“I don’t think I’d make a good widow,” she said matter-of-factly. “Wouldn’t know how to behave. Penny’s back tonight, by the way.”
“Are you going out? Do you need me to mind Scorpius?”
“That’d be great, yeah. When do you finish here?”
“I need to head to the Ministry and get briefed for the new job, but – ” he checked his watch – “I should be home by six.”
“See you then,” she said, and Draco tucked the letter into the pocket of his robes and lit the Floo.
Draco had done contract work for Magical Law Enforcement before, but the witch at the desk told him he’d be reporting directly to the Aurors this time. She directed him down the hallway, left, right, left again, through the door on the end, can’t miss it, and smiled the kind of smile at him that suggested she didn’t know who he was.
He followed her directions, pausing only briefly to question if he was supposed to walk through the double doors into the Auror office unaccompanied, and then shrugged. If he wasn’t, it wasn’t his fault.
Almost immediately, he walked bodily into Harry Potter.
“Fuck,” he yelped at the collision, followed by, “Oh. Potter.”
“Who let you in?” Harry asked, and despite being thirty-something and a respected professional in his field Draco was thrown back in time so fast it gave him whiplash.
“I’m here by invitation,” he said in a voice that aimed for cold and haughty and probably came too close to a sneer. He produced the letter.
“They’ve invited you onto the Lestrange case?” Harry read the letter, flipped it over. “That’s a conflict of interest, surely. They can’t find someone else?”
“I’m the only one.” That was definitely more cold than petulant; he took the letter back. “And my mother has no claim to the estate, which I hope is what you meant by a conflict of interest.”
Harry at least had the grace to take the lifeline. “Right. Yeah. The Black family line. Andromeda had no claim either.”
“So who’s heading up the case?”
“Me.”
Draco suppressed his first, second and third reactions (all variants of what the fuck) and settled on, “But you didn’t know I’ve been brought on?”
“Procurement’s covered by MLE, not me. We just briefed them that we needed an expert in artefacts and – what was it – ”
“Forensic archaeology,” Draco supplied.
“I was expecting a curse-breaker,” Harry said.
“Curse-breakers are mercenaries,” Draco said dismissively. “They don’t take government contracts, and you wouldn’t want them if they did.”
“My brother-in-law’s a curse-breaker,” Harry said reproachfully, and Draco rolled his eyes.
“Hire him then, though I guarantee you won’t get him out of bed for less than five thousand Galleons.”
Harry did not dignify this with a response. After a loaded silence, he seemed to have decided to be professional again. “You signed your contract?”
“Not yet. I assume I need a witness?”
“I can do that.”
Draco dropped the offer letter on a nearby desk, tapped it with his wand to reveal the contract, and skimmed through the clauses. Standard confidentiality and risk management, some additional details about payments due his next of kin if he died in the line of duty –
“The fuck is this?” he asked eventually.
“Something wrong?” Harry peered over his shoulder.
“How likely am I to die in the line of duty?”
“Standard Auror clause. They’ll need your next of kin – ”
“Got a quill?”
Harry produced one, and Draco scribbled down Astoria’s details.
“You’re still married?” Harry blurted, and Draco turned.
“Do you ask all your contractors such personal questions?”
“I just. Uh. Heard…rumours.”
“Pray do tell me more.”
Harry was properly floundering now, apparently realising too late how unprofessional he was being in his own workplace, but committed to the hole he had dug himself. “Uh. Obviously. Mistaken.”
Draco weighed his options and decided on ambiguity. “That depends on the rumours. Sign as witness, please, Potter.”
Harry did, cheeks quite pink, and sent the contract away with a wave of his wand. “Right. Done.”
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“The briefing?” Draco prompted.
“Right. Yeah.” Harry led them into a small meeting room off to the side, filled with piles of paper and parchment. A large plan of the Lestrange estate was stretched across the table and drooped off either side; it was about three hundred years old by Draco’s cursory glance and had a coffee cup on it. With a pointed scowl at his erstwhile nemesis, Draco vanished it and inspected the parchment for damage.
“I was drinking that,” Harry said reproachfully.
“You are an abomination.”
“I assume you’re familiar with the Lestrange estate,” Harry said, in the tone that Draco was beginning to recognise meant ‘I am trying to be professional, conscious of my failure in this regard, and resentful of the circumstances.’
“Not especially.”
“Really?”
Draco rolled his eyes, straightened up, and said, “If you can’t brief me like any other contractor, Potter, perhaps you should ask one of your colleagues to step in.”
“You’re not any other contractor,” Harry said stubbornly. “You’re – ” He flailed his arms – “Malfoy.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?”
He was quietly grateful for this little display; having the requisite self-awareness to know he’d been madly, complicatedly in love with Harry during their Hogwarts years he’d been apprehensive to see him again, newly single (as the Prophet had breathlessly reported) and working – allegedly – at the top of his field. Draco appreciated competence in a man. Thankfully there was none here to appreciate; just Potter coasting along on his reputation as always.
“I just meant,” Harry began, looking like he was trying very hard to suppress a scowl, “That Bellatrix was your aunt. It’s not unreasonable that you visited.”
“Aunt Bella was in Azkaban most of my life,” Draco pointed out. “And when she wasn’t, Mother preferred her to come to ours. Given I’ve never had to work with Aurors for artefact assessment before I suspect we’re about to find out why.”
“That’s…helpful, actually,” Harry said, almost to himself. “A home not even Death Eaters would take a child…”
“I’m still here,” Draco said coldly.
“Right, yeah. So. The case. You’ve probably gathered, it was seized by the Ministry just after the war, Lestrange estate lawyers appealed given there was a living heir – Rodolphus’s brother – and that his life sentence was also under appeal, backlog in the courts, heir died in Azkaban, lawyers asked for a pause to find a new heir, then another extension to see whether it could pass to the Black line instead – that’s when we would have been contacted – ”
“We?” Draco repeated.
“I’m Teddy Lupin’s godfather, I get contacted for anything related to his inheritance. Anyway, will was ironclad about the Blacks having no claim, so estate defaulted back to the Ministry. It’s been another few years getting the approvals through to start curse breaking, forensics, value assessments, all that. It’s a huge job.”
“Who else will be on site?”
“Most of the Auror team will be curse breakers,” Harry said. “Whole-of-building curses rather than individual artefacts, though if you don’t have specific training in curse breaking – ”
“I’ve done a course,” Draco said.
“Right, good. Still, anything you don’t feel comfortable handling, pass it on to one of the team. You’ll get a more thorough safety briefing once we’re on site, and the risk threshold is lower for contractors – ”
“My risk threshold is probably even lower,” Draco said calmly. “I’ll leave the heroics to your team.”
“There will also be property assessors and surveyors,” Harry continued. “They’ll arrive once we’ve done a first sweep of the grounds, and will be based in the grounds until we’ve cleared the house. You’re welcome to arrive with them, if you like.”
Draco eyed the architectural plan more closely; it had more than one recent stain on it, and its placement on the too-small table was causing damage where it draped over the edge. “Absolutely not,” he decided. “Wouldn’t trust any of you with heritage artefacts unsupervised. I’ll be there when you are.”